In this June 6, 2013, photo, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., right, joined by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, left, addresses Attorney General Eric Holder as he testifies at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee as lawmakers examine the budget for the Justice Department, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Revelations of massive government collections of Americans phone and email records have reinvigorated an odd-couple political alliance of the far left and right. “This is a marginal national security group within our party,” Graham said of those who call the government snooping unwarranted or unconstitutional. “I just don t see how anybody gets elected as a Republican” by running to the “left of Obama on national security,” said Graham, one of the Senate s most hawkish members. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

While many politicians have called for the government to rein in its spying on Americans’ internet and phone activities, others have defended the practices as necessary to protect our safety.

“In World War II, the mentality of the public was that our whole way of life was at risk, we’re all in,” Graham told reporters. “We censored the mail. When you wrote a letter overseas, it got censored. When a letter was written back from the battlefield to home, they looked at what was in the letter to make sure they were not tipping off the enemy.

“If I thought censoring the mail was necessary, I would suggest it, but I don’t think it is.”

OK, well, where to start?

First, we are not in World War II. While the country’s military is engaged overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, and while our intelligence and domestic security agencies operate worldwide, the U.S. homeland is not in a state of war, unlike in World War II when we citizens to collect tin cans and nylons for the war effort.

Second, Graham’s argument seems to imply that things that occurred during World War II are justified now. Is he saying it would be all right to put people in internment camps again?

Finally, he speaks of correspondence with members of the military, whose mail might be subject to review for security reasons, but then applies that argument to everyone’s mail. Really? Citizens’ mail should be subject to the same kind of scrutiny that an Army intelligence officer’s is?

We’re glad, at least, that Graham doesn’t think it’s necessary to monitor citizens’ mail, but we don’t think the government should be indiscriminately snooping through Americans’ mail to begin with.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

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